One of Boris Johnson's projects to turn London into "the best city in the world" was today confirmed as a plan to paint some of the capital's busiest cycle lanes a rather Tory shade of blue.

Twelve "cycle superhighways" being built in London "will provide cyclists with safe, direct, continuous, well marked and easily navigable routes along recognised commuter corridors", the Conservative mayor wrote in a new policy document, the first stage of a £116m scheme to promote cycling in the city.

But cycling campaigners said the plan amounted to little more than repainting existing cycle lanes.

The first two routes have been under construction since March – one along the A24 between Morden and the City, and the other along the A13 from Barking to Tower Gateway.

They will be officially opened on 19 July but, as most of the routes run along existing arterial roads, rather than in segregated lanes, thousands of cyclists have already sampled the superhighway experience, albeit unwittingly.

South of the river, along the busy Clapham Road, sections of old green cycle lanes have simply been painted over in bright blue. Most are as narrow as before – 1.5 metres wide, which makes overtaking tricky.

The national cyclists' organisation, the Cyclists' Touring Club was not impressed. "Boris has chosen a nice Tory blue, which he seems to have modelled on the blue cycle lanes you get in Copenhagen," Chris Peck, the CTC's policy co-ordinator, said.

"The problem is that he has only taken the colour and not the design. In Copenhagen, bike lanes are often three to four metres wide. Here, the only guarantee is that they will be 1.5 metres in width, which isn't nearly enough."

Peck said that, according to figures from Transport for London in 2008, 13,426 cyclists used Clapham Road each day.

"Given the numbers who will be using these superhighways now and in the future, they need to be built with the growth in cycling in mind," he added.

Tom Bogdanowicz, of the London Cycling Campaign, said that, with London's population forecast to increase by almost 1 million by 2025, more people would be cycling, adding that investment now must reflect that. He welcomed Johnson's acknowledgment that cycling must be accommodated on all roads, rather than seen as a minority activity.

Johnson said: "I am determined to turn London into a cyclised city – a civilised city where people can ride their bikes safely and easily in a pleasant environment.

"Cycling, with all its social, environmental, health and financial benefits, has an important role to play in the future of the capital. Put simply, it's the best way to get around our city, and arguably the single most important tool for making London the best big city in the world."

Silka Kennedy-Todd, a spokeswoman for TfL, which has worked with the mayor on the initiative, said the superhighways were "far more than just painting the road blue" and that "research has shown that it is a good colour which stands out, and has been used in Copenhagen and other European cities".

"The cycle superhighways project has a budget of approximately £30m this year, out of the £116m being spent on cycling in total in the financial year 2010/11, and that money goes towards more than just road improvements," Kennedy-Todd added.

"We will be using the money to put in more bike parking, providing more cycle training and helping businesses to encourage employees to cycle to work by putting in lockers or shower facilities." The mayor's other main cycling initiative for 2010 is the hire scheme which will make 6,000 cycles available for rent across the capital from 30 July.

It's all OK – until I hit the lights'

The word "superhighway" combines two terms a London cyclist will rarely use about a route. It is an ambitious name for what, at this stage, seems to merely entail a liberal use of blue paint.

If the idea of road is to encourage more people to cycle, then one of its key features should be to make people feel safer. HoweverAs a relatively inexperienced cyclist, I tend to avoid busy roads. But as I tried an early section of the route this afternoon in Tooting, south London, I was struck by the way in which cars, as a whole, did their best to stay out of the blue lane.

Which is not to say the lane itself always helps them to do so. It varies from 1.5m wide to 2.5m, with seemingly no logic. At its narrowest, the traffic is still disconcertingly close.

More worrying is the effect at traffic lights. Cars, vans and lorries – having done their best to observe the lane while travelling alongside it – disregard it entirely when forced to stop at a junction. Cyclists suddenly find the lane brought to an abrupt halt as traffic sprawls across the path, just like approaching a normal junction.

At present, this seems its most serious flaw – and, as a novice, it is junctions that terrify me most – as cyclists are forced to revert to weaving through lanes of kerb-hogging cars.

Drivers may be told to stay off the blue lane, but on the evidence of my ride, London's roads leave no room to go anywhere else.